The 10 Most Watched Ads on YouTube in 2017 – This impressive collection of work includes two video ads that exceeded 100 million views. Which was your favorite? Natalie Portman for Miss Dior or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson” for Apple? AdWeek

B2B Tech Buyers More Motivated by Reliability & Ease of Use Claims Than Price. A study by Lavidge of 400 B2B decision makers in the US reports that technology buyers prefer reliability (64) over low cost (49%) when justifying purchasing decisions. MarketingCharts

The 2018 Hiring Outlook for Marketing and Advertising Jobs. 46% of marketing and advertising executives say it is somewhat challenging to find skilled workers today; 7% say it is very challenging – MarketingProfs

New IRI Report Details Value of Contextually Relevant Advertising. Marketers who instead mix in relevant context strategies can bolster sales lift and further increase return on investment (ROI) by up to 30%. Morningstar

How Twitter Celebrated The Last Jedi in Style With Real-Time Billboards. Disney teamed up with Twitter to plaster fan tweets across giant billboards in real time. AdWeek

Google Mobile-First Index Rolls Out For ‘Handful Of Sites’. Webmasters will see significantly increased crawling by Smartphone Googlebot, and the snippets in the results, as well as the content on the Google cache pages, will be from the mobile version of the pages. SearchMarketing Daily

Google faces fresh EU showdown as rivals attack search giant’s response to record fine. “(Google) continues to place its shopping service at an advantage in search results.” Telegraph

Instagram ad revenue to double to $ 10.87bn by 2019. eMarketer predicts a thirds of social media users will use Instagram by 2021 – The Drum

How Instagram’s new features will impact organic reach. The addition of follow hashtags and a Recommended for you section have favorable and unfortunate implications for brands, publishers and influencers. Here’s a rundown – DigiDay

Facebook adds Snooze button to mute annoying friends and Pages. For when you don’t want to unfriend or unfollow and just need a break. The Next Web

Facebook Will Now Punish Posts That Beg for Likes and Comments. Facebook said in a statement on Monday that it will begin clamping down on “engagement bait” across its social network starting this week. Fortune

Facebook’s Plan To Take On TV. That’s right. And for starters, in January Facebook Watch will host a live show, “Mixed Match Challenge,” produced by the WWE. MediaPost

On the Lighter Side:

Giphy’s List of the Most Popular GIFs in 2017 Is a Gift to Behold. From NFL celebrations to dancing Wonder Woman. AdWeek

Awww. Samsung and Casey Neistat Turned an Abandoned Shopping Mall Into a Winter Wonderland for Kids. Happy holidays to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee! AdWeek

It appears that Target is still not keen on accepting Apple Pay as a mode of payment in its onsite stores. In a recent post, America’s second-largest retailer announced that it had rolled out Wallet, its own mobile payment system that is now active as a feature for Target’s iOS and Android apps.

The arrival of the Wallet feature has actually been long anticipated by customers. Talks about Target launching its own mobile payment have been around since 2015, but the company waited till January 2017 to confirm its plans.

With the introduction of Wallet, Target customers will now have the option of seamlessly checking out their in-store purchases with the use of their smartphones. They’ll also be able to update points and use discounts with Cartwheel digital coupons.

Reportedly, the Wallet feature found in the Target app is similar to other in-store payment options like Wal-Mart Pay. However, Wal-Mart Pay uses QR code for scanning items, Target’s system is barcode-based.

For it to work though, it seems that shoppers will need a REDcard—a Target-branded debit or credit card packed with special offers. Target, however, wants more customers to shop with Wallet and is already working out a way to get them to use the feature even if they don’t own a REDcard.

The main incentive for using Wallet is that checking out for in-store purchases would be faster. This is achieved because customers can now check out for payment as well as apply Cartwheel deals with a single scan of the in-app barcode.

It should be noted that while Target does not accept payments using Apple Pay for in-store purchases, items bought from Target’s online store can still be paid using Apple’s payment platform.